Cultural Evolution and the Singing, Dancing Throng: An Objective Approach to Intellectual History

Abstract

Intellectual history tends to distort and discredit the material upon which it practices. The insistence on orderly presentation inevitably organizes the thinking of whatever epoch under consideration into schools. These are, if possible, to be seen as polar opposites of one another. The oversimplification involved in the shuffling of diverse thinkers into a few imaginary "schools" must of necessity occasion great misrepresentation.